Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 5:23pm

Interviews With Veterans of the Revolution in 1864

 

Hattip to commenter RL for finding this American Heritage article.

In 1864 the Reverend Elias Brewster Hilliard, a minister from Connecticut, at the request of a Hartford publisher, set out on the task of interviewing the seven surviving veterans of the American Revolution in the North, writing down their memories of the American Revolution and obtaining their views of the Civil War.  In 1958 American Heritage published a fascinating story on the results of these interviews, and the story may be read here.

The American Revolution is not normally associated with photography, but some elderly veterans of that conflict lived long enough to have their pictures taken by the then cutting edge technology of photography.  Some of the photographs were taken for the 1864 interviews.  Among the veterans pictured above is John Gray, the last surviving veteran of the Revolution.  He was born fittingly enough near Mount Vernon.  His father was killed at the battle of White Plains in 1776.  John joined up at 16 in 1780 and was present at Yorktown when Cornwallis’ army marched by in surrender.  He died on March 29, 1868, age 104.  He was not among the veterans interviewed in 1864, and I assume he was overlooked.

How brief our history as an independent nation truly is!  Men who fought to give this nation birth lived to see the Civil War and the ultimate preservation of the nation.  The last surviving veteran of the Civil War, Albert Woolson, died in 1956 just six months before I was born in 1957.  We are still a very young nation.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those spirits dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

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Mr.and Mrs.Jesse Fremont Bateman
Mr.and Mrs.Jesse Fremont Bateman
Wednesday, September 21, AD 2011 5:07pm

Dear sir,I read american Catholic and I thank you for your hard work.I was very interested in the revolutionary war article and was wondering if you could provide me and the rest of our readers with the % of fighters and if possible some of the names of the men that were catholic in the american army.,thank you for your valuble time and God bless,Mr.Jesse Fremont Bateman….

John Nolan
John Nolan
Thursday, September 22, AD 2011 10:50am

What is fascinating to me about this post is how a single human lifespan can encompass so much history. Only a century separates the birth of Mozart and the death of Schumann, yet what a musical revolution was there in between! Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) recalled that as a young boy he remembered an old friend of the family, Mme de Mongolfier (related to the famous balloonists) recalling how as a young girl she had witnessed the mob surging down the rue St-Antoine in 1789. Towards the end of his life he mused ‘There will be someone living well into the 21st century who can say “I was told of the fall of the Bastille by someone who heard it from an eye-witness.” ‘.

Norm
Sunday, September 25, AD 2011 4:02pm

This is really cool.

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